Observation - It’s been going on as a gossip or will I say argument.
That players of nowadays are more focus on making money rather than playing for passion like the old days.
Actually it's at beginning of the new player that they play football with a passion, and I understand that football players has three stages.
•stage1 At start, they play football with passions
•stage2 They play football with pride and also to be influenced and being attractive to other clubs
•stage3 They play football with to make money...this stage3 they consider it as a final stage, and that makes them to be money conscious because they more funds to retire with.
I also can strongly say that passion for football ends in Ronaldo and Messi ERA.
I disagree with you...you can see that both involvement in football has drop reduced compared before, so after they retired other incoming players maybe better than them.